An influential social entrepreneur working in this field is Dr. Anna Alisjahbana. She is participating in our WCM Workshop in May 2010 and acting as a strategic and operational advisor to WCM.

Anna is the founder of Suryakanti Foundation and the Frontiers for Health Foundation. She is a Professor Emeritus in Pediatrics with a subspecialty in Neonatology. From 1993-2003, she was the director of the WHO Collaborative Center for Perinatal Health in Bandung. She was worked as a consultant for the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and UNICEF in Indonesia.

For over 25 years, the Suryakanti Foundation has been working on the prevention, early detection and treatment of young children (aged 0-5). The foundation is the first of this kind in Indonesia. The Frontiers for Health Foundation is a non-profit research institution working on issues of community empowerment with emphasis on vulnerable and isolated people (including women).

Since Anna introduced pregnancy care, maternal and early childhood care in Indonesia through the training and empowering of women to deliver the care, she has created the midwife profession and trained over 10,000 midwives in the country. Her work saves an estimate 15,000 babies every year in Indonesia. Her care model has become an international standard for UNICEF, Plan International and Save the Children.

Progress for women is based on their physical and mental well-being. Women must have access to proper nutrition and healthcare.

585,000 women die every year, over 1,600 every day, from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. See WHO/UNICEF Revised estimates of maternal mortality, 1996.

A pregnant woman in Africa is 180 times more likely to die of pregnancy complications than in Western Europe. See Feminist Women's Centre.

Each year an estimated two million girls, usually aged 4 to 8, are forcibly subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). See Amnesty International.

More girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. See New York Times article, "The Women's Crusade" by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl Wudunn, 2009.

An estimated 600,000 to 820,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 70 percent are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors. The majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation. See US Department of State.

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